Abrupt climate changes have affected rainfall patterns worldwide in the past, especially in the tropical monsoon region, a new study shows. An international team of scientists used dripstones from globally distributed caves together with model simulations to analyse the global impacts of rapid Northern-Hemisphere temperature increases, the widely studied Dansgaard-Oeschger events, that repeatedly occurred during the last ice age.
The Dansgaard-Oeschger events are rapid Northern-Hemisphere temperature jumps of up to 15°C in Greenland that repeatedly occurred within a few decades during the last ice age.
The scientists were able to reproduce these impacts, suggested by more than 100 cave formations from 67 different caves distributed across all continents except Antarctica, with complex climate models."This shows that we are on a good track in improving our models to be able to represent abrupt climate changes in more detail," adds Boers.